NIST Issues First Release of Smart Grid Framework

The Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has issued an initial list of standards, a preliminary cyber security strategy, and other elements of a framework to support transforming the nation’s aging electric power system into an interoperable smart grid.

The Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007 (EISA) set development of the smart grid as a national policy goal, and it assigned NIST the “primary responsibility to coordinate development of a framework that includes protocols and model standards for information management to achieve interoperability of smart grid devices and systems…”